By Prof Artwell Nhemachena
ELECTIONS in Africa are often weaponised to effect political regime change wherever Western powers have interests.
Therefore, electoral processes in Africa cannot be fair when the elections and economies are weaponised by political regime change brigades that work in cahoots with Western powers.
Weaponised change, in the form of regime change, is violent as witnessed in Libya and Iraq.
Indeed, the violence that attended the colonisation process was meant to bring about change which not only deposed African leaders but also resulted in the dispossession and exploitation of Africans.
Colonialists brought about change – and the results of that change indicate that not all change is worth celebrating.
There is change that results in re-colonisation and there is change that results in de-colonisation.
So, when one speaks about bringing change, it is necessary to specify which one exactly, if Africans are to avoid re-colonisation.
Change cannot be an open cheque.
It has to be qualified, otherwise it would include Western regime changes which effectively amount to the re-colonisation of Africa.
Change that promises to open up opportunities for Africans to work in the sweatshops of Western transnational corporations and industries is not good enough in the 21st Century where Africans need more of opportunities to own, control and use their own resources than opportunities to work for and be someone else’s slaves.
The 21st Century is not for Zimbabweans, and Africans more broadly, to work in neo-colonial and Western-owned sweatshops.
It is a century for Africans to own, control and use their own resources – and to invest in their own economies.
When liberation movements ask Zimbabweans to vote for liberation, they are advising them to vote for change that brings freedom by engendering ownership and control of resources to Zimbabweans and all Africans.
Conversely, other parties and movements advise Zimbabweans to vote so that they remain workers and slaves in sweatshops owned and control by Western corporations and industrialists.
Yet we all know that one who slaves or works for someone else is never free – there is no real freedom in slaving or working for someone else in neo-colonial sweatshops.
The colonial horse and rider relationships, between whites and blacks, which were proposed by the Rhodesian settlers and rejected by Africans in the then Rhodesia are now worryingly evident at a global level in the 21st Century.
African liberation movements fought precisely to depose white settlers who were riding on Africans whom the settlers regarded as horses.
After independence, Westerners sponsored opposition political parties that promised to fight for regime change.
But the million-dollar question is: What other change is more desirable for Africans than that which deposes the imperial riders that ride on Africans as if they are their horses.
My point here is that, some political parties can very easily be weaponised at a global level to reverse the freedom that Africans got from imperial masters who have, for centuries, regarded themselves as the riders of Africans who are deemed to be the horses.
When opposition political parties accept the dominance of the West, they, by extension, accept and support the existence of horse-and-rider relationships wherein their members become horses for Western riders.
In light of the foregoing, I argue herein that fundamental freedoms for Africans are not merely in freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of association, the freedom to eat from the hands of Western donors and so on.
Africans also need the freedom from being other people’s horses.
Africans need freedom from imperial masters who regard themselves as riders on Africans who are deemed to be the horses in the global arena.
The point is that there is no real freedom in elections that do not allow Africans to freely own and control their resources – and to be their own investors, masters and employers in Africa.
Weaponised elections have the effect of keeping the status quo, which is to say that weaponised elections ensure that Africans continue slaving and working for other people.
Leveling the playing field in African electoral processes is not easy when Western powers continue to weaponise African economies and elections for purposes of regime change.
In a world where everything has been weaponised by Western powers, it is necessary for Zimbabweans to understand that even change is weaponised in the sense of being used in regime change agendas such as recently happened in Libya and Iraq where incumbent leaders were targeted because they had put in place economic policies that favoured indigenous people and not Western transnational corporations.
While, in Libya and Iraq, Western powers sponsored regime changes so that they would take over the oil which was owned and controlled by the States on behalf of indigenous Libyans and Iraqis, in the case of Zimbabwe, regime change would involve not only deposing nationalist leaders but also reversing benefits of land redistribution and of the indigenisation policies.
In order to weaponise elections in Africa, Westerners fetishise the electoral processes.
Thus, the Ugandan people’s recent rejection of homosexuality is uncritically linked to their election of Yoweri Museveni and of the Ugandan Members of Parliament who are deemed to be homophobic.
Similarly, the problem of unemployment in South Africa is uncritically linked to the South Africans’ election of Cyril Ramaphosa and ANC into power.
In Namibia, the problem of unemployment is linked to Namibians’ election of President Hage Geingob and his SWAPO party.
And the problem of unemployment in Zimbabwe is linked to Zimbabweans’ election of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and ZANU PF.
Elections have become fetishes in Africa such that even those who fail in their marriages and in getting married are quick to connect such failures to election of particular leaders into office.
Indeed, whatever genuine and
well-meaning party will get into power in Africa will be blamed for every conceivable problem on a continent that has learnt to fetishise elections.
Because some Africans have been taught to fetishise elections, they no longer recognise that economic challenges in Africa result from the West’s weaponisation of economies in Africa.
When the EU, the UK and the US imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, they were in effect weaponising the economy of Zimbabwe.
When the US recently threatened to impose sanctions on Uganda, for rejecting homosexuality, the US was threatening to weaponise the economy of Uganda. Besides, when the US recently threatened, through the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, to impose sanctions on African States which support or co-operate with Russia, it effectively was threatening to weaponise economies of Africa.
While those who are simplistic would believe that economies in Africa are merely being mismanaged by African leaders, it is essential to know that economies in Africa are in a mess because they are weaponised by the Western powers.
It would be simplistic for some Zimbabweans to believe the story that the economy, including the currency, in Zimbabwe is in crisis because the Zimbabwean State has failed to manage it.
The very important thing that Zimbabweans should notice is that economies in Africa are weaponised, sadly by those Westerners who are often deemed to be valuable investors.
The solution for Africans would be to take over ownership, control and utilisation of their natural resources – and to invest in their economies such that the Africans become their own employers.
The solution is not to change political leadership in Africa but to change the structures of ownership, control and utilisation of African resources.
Of course, Westerners, including colonialists and their descendants who continue to keep African resources, would want to divert Africans’ attention so that they focus on politics, as if the entire sets of problems in Africa emanate from African politics.
This is why Westerners would want Africans to fetishise elections – such that it would appear like elections in Africa are the alpha and omega of all problems in Africa.
Instead of focusing on political regimes change in Africa, Africans need to focus on what I call ‘economic regimes change on the continent’.
Regimes are not only political but there are also economic regimes.
While the colonial political regime may have disappeared with independence in Africa, the colonial economic regimes continue to reign on the continent long after independence.
So, political parties that promise to bring change to Africa must specify which change they want to bring.
If there is any need for regime change in Zimbabwe, it is the economic regime rather than the political regime that deserves to be changed.
African economic power and prosperity cannot be achieved merely by changing African political leadership.
What is needed is to change the economic regime such that Africans begin to own control and use their resources and invest in their own economies.
If changing leadership is a necessity for progress and for African security, why is it that Africans are made to only focus on changing political leadership and not changing those who own and control the economies in Africa?
The evidence from Western impositions of sanctions on African States shows that whoever owns and controls the economies in Africa rides, in the logics of horse-and-rider relationship, over African political leaders.
To undo these horse-and-rider relationships, Africans need to execute regime change agendas such that there are changes in terms of those who own and control African resources.
Africans should own and control their resources.
In fact, soon after independence in Africa, the IMF and the World Bank went around African countries coercing Africans to adopt the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) which involved privatising State-owned enterprises.
These were processes of economic emasculation. Africans were being economically emasculated at a time when they were assured that they had won independence.
Political power without economic power does not make sense because politics and governance depend on economics and on resources which African States have not been allowed to recover at the point of and after independence.
The weakness, failure and collapse of African State institutions is not because African leaders have all failed.
It is because Africans were economically emasculated by the West.
Russia, today, is able to resist Western sanctions because it still owns its land and state-owned enterprises.
China today is still able to resist Western sanctions because it still owns its land and state-owned enterprises.
The problem in Africa is that even when some Africans are given opportunities to own and control their resources, they instead prefer to work in Western-owned and controlled industries.
Europeans and Americans own and control their land and State-owned enterprises.
They do not only hold elections but their elections occur in environments where the citizens and the States own and control their land and enterprises.
The great fraud is that Africans have been made to believe that all they need for prosperity and development are ‘democratic’ elections.
Yet, there are many reports to the effect that millions of jobs are set to be lost to industrial robots as human workers are being replaced by the robots worldwide, including in Africa.
Western industries are preferring to replace human workers with robots.
Africans need to replace the obsession with unemployment rates with what I call ownership rates such that instead of worrying too much about how many Africans are unemployed, we begin to worry more about questions of how many Africans own and control their African resources, including land.
It is time to shift focus and think in terms of measuring ownership rates in Africa by Africans.
African liberation movements have, historically and heroically, fought for African recovery of ownership and control over African resources.
Thus, the change that is needed in Africa is one that ensures that Africans take ownership and control over their resources.
As they go to elections, Zimbabweans must be clear about what change they want to see and what change would help them to recover sovereignty over their resources.
